Our Year!

With any year there are high and lows and our stable experienced many on both fronts. Sadly we lost our star galloper, “Folding Gear” to colic after a brave fight for over 2 weeks and unfortunately the battle was too great in the end. Horses of his calibre are hard to come by especially for a small operation such as ours but as one chapter closes another unfolds and the emergence of some high quality fillies came at the right moment.

“Sabatini” progressed from a Bendigo maiden win to take out the Gr3 “Quezette Stakes” at her third race start and ended her campaign with a courageous 3rd in the Gr1 “1000 Guineas”. Both her stablemates, “Pittsburgh Flyer and Fenway” also achieved black type status with their performances in the Gr2 “Edward Manifold” and Gr2 “Wakeful Stakes'”.

The fairer sex appear to be the dominant forces in our stables at present and “Choose” had a great start to her racing career bringing up a hat trick of wins in her first 3 starts. New addition to our stable, “Madam Gangster”kept the ball rolling in the later part of the year also bringing up a hat trick of wins from her 4 starts for the stable. So together with the young gun fillies, the team looks to have some exciting times heading into 2015.

Sadly we will be missing “Gold Sand, Parishon and Savitar” from our team who were the flag bearers for the stable over the past racing seasons. All have retired with the later two horses embarking on show careers in their post racing life.

On a positive we look forward to our apprentice, “Tahlia Hope”commencing her riding career as a jockey at some stage during this year. No doubt there will be some anxious moments as the 4th generation of Hope emerges on the racing stage.

In closing we had a great year overall so let’s reflect with our pictorial video of all our winners from 2014.